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An anonymous reader writes "Major Australian retailers are running a print advertising campaign to get the government to decrease the amount where the Goods and Services tax (Australian sales tax) comes into effect for all online purchases. Currently, the tax free amount is at $1000 AUD for online purchases. The retailers, such as Target, Harvey Norman, David Jones, Myer and others, are lobbying through newspapers and are considering launching a television commercial. The print adverts are claiming that if the amount remains the same, Australian jobs will be lost and the economy will be harmed. This is facing a massive backlash from consumers, and the government's assistant treasurer said it was an action by stores to fix the issues affecting them."

The GST has NOTHING to do with these people not getting sales, the fact that goods vary from 20 to 70% cheaper, yes 70% cheaper overseas tells me / us / Australians that the GST has little to no impact on the price compared to outright greed.Books especially, online OR retail, overseas is vastly different.

Sigh. It is not 'outright greed'. It is that doing business in Australia is so incredibly expensive. We have one of the highest average wages in the OECD. On top of that we have payroll tax and compulsory superannaution costs which must also be born by the employer. We have just gone retro with our industrial relations laws (back to the 80s) and union-led wage inflation is already appearing in some areas of our economy. We have one of the highest commercial average rental rates in the world. We have moderately high electricity tarrifs and rapidly climbing water tarrifs. The cost of our internet is also double that of in the States.

All of this feeds through to large operating costs for having an actual retail outlet vs importing direct from overseas. So no, it is not outright greed.

I partially agree with your premise: I run a company in Australia and doing business here is expensive but I don't think it justifies a 200%+ markup on items. In any case the biggest problem here is not the price it's the complete indifference of Australian retailers - they simply aren't interested in helping you, it's all simply a case of import the cheapest, nastiest crap from china and throw it at the customer as you shove them out the door.

And if that isn't bad enough, the New Zealand Retail Association thinks it's a great idea - they want the 15% GST to be applied to EVERY purchase, no matter the origin.

The way I see it, they should just stop whining that they don't have it easy any more. You just can't have a 50% margin any more, get over it. Stores should start competing based on their actual merits, such as the ability to get a product to you in less than 2 weeks. And an actual warranty.

I vote and I say no.The big retailers came and close down the mom and pop shops.Now the big retailers are hurting, and they want to return to profitability by taxing the competition.Not sure how it can be done economicaly

The reason why people are shopping online is not because they don't have to pay the tax. Even if they did they can still get it cheaper accounting for postage/shipping by shopping online. The tax we are talking about is 10% yet many products you can get for 50% of the Australian price. It seems most retailers in Australia think the exchange rate for AUD/USD is 0.6 (currently at parity).

This isn't just bricks and mortar either:Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN: AU$20,775.00 or US$11,899

Yeah exactly. An American friend of mine recently flew home to buy a Macbook Pro because quite frankly it was a free flight for him and a chance to see the family. Puts it in perspective when it costs about the same to take a trans pacific flight twice and buy the product in person as it does to drive 10 min down the road and buy the product.

The problem Gerry Harvey and co have is not that their goods are 10% more expensive then the equivalent goods online, the problem Harvey and co have is that their goods are 50% more expensive then the equivalent online.

Gerry Harvey's store, Harvey Norman (AKA Hardly Normal [prices]) is one of the stores I refuse to shop at due to it's high prices, incredibly annoying ads and now this. What Harvey really wants is for the government to step in and protect his profits (most of which come from predatory "interest free" deals which have something along the lines of 30% interest applied) by artificially making it more expensive to buy online.

Fortunately our assistant treasurer Bill Shorten has already shot the idea down saying it would be too expensive to implement.

The problem Gerry Harvey and co have is not that their goods are 10% more expensive then the equivalent goods online, the problem Harvey and co have is that their goods are 50% more expensive then the equivalent online.

Except when was the last time you actually paid the sticker price in a Harvey Norman, Retravision, etc? There is pretty much a cultural expectation in Australia that electrical and whitegoods shops will knock another 15% off the price if you just mutter something like "hmm, what price can you give me if I buy it today"? I have almost always found that you're actually better off looking up an on-line price, then popping into your nearest shop and mentioning it to the salesperson. They will then pop over t

The GST issue is actually a non-issue but it's a highly visible one that can be driven hard. As it is, the 10% isn't the cause of the make/break when it comes to retailing. The bigger issue at hand here however is the constant desire we all have to increase our income more and decrease our expenditure (for the same quantity of goods). However, it's a circular system (I won't say closed, since we have inflation) and if you demand more wages then those wages have to come from... PROFIT. What people need

I'm just a regular worker bee and what I've been told and seen since birth is that free trade and globalization is good and it is the future. I won't go into my own views on that... but I've accepted it.

One of the realities of that is you have to accept that an Australian, American, Canadian, European... is no more entitled to a high standard of living than an Indian, Chinese, Brazilian. And so when I see a western manufacturer complain they cannot compete... I say... why should I care more

This story is a disgrace and the vast vast majority of consumers are utterly disgusted by the actions of these large chains.We are currently under an oligopoly in Australia for retail options in general and it's mostly getting worse.

I went for the first time overseas recently to Hong Kong, Paris and London and within 2 or 3 days of the holiday, myself and my travel partner were utterly shocked, upset and dismayed at just how/ludicrously/ cheap everything was, clothing, shoes, internet, food - everything was vastly cheaper.Things have always been traditionally 'gouged' here in regards to pricing, the problem is it's not just the retailers being scumbags, from what I gather the manufacturers, wholesalers and suppliers to the country are bastards too.Apple for example sell products internationally with no middle man, the Apple stores purchased their goods from Apple asia where they are likely manufactured. The pricing is often not just 5 or 10% more but 20 to 50% more depending on items.

I purchased a pair of identical shoes to a pair I got in Melbourne for $280 in a genuine retail Nike store in Hong Kong for $70, I've looked at them thoroughly, several times over, they really are the genuine item yet the price difference is astounding.Our dollar has recently gained strength internationally yet goods still don't appear to be getting cheaper in the slightest.

As for the retailers, Aussie retailers are living in the DARK.AGES - they have little to no concept of what an online store is or how to run one and have been laughing up the profits for years, finally the cost of shipping things internationally has continued to drop and the AU$ risen to the point we're going overseas for more and more goods.I say a plague on all their houses, these people are greedy vermin, threatening Aussie jobs for the sake of (gross amounts) of profit.

Your example is awful. Shoes, and clothes, aren't based on what they cost to manufacture, they are priced based on what people will pay. The reason Nike charges more in Melbourne is because people will pay for it. Just like they used to charge $400 for Air Jordans in America. It wasn't costing $400 to manufacture them.

Beyond that, there are other issues. The median Hong Kong resident makes 30% less than the median Australian resident. Of course any item that has wages as a major portion of the product cos

Ok so one particular item I listed is a bad example - you ignore the book comment, dismiss my post and then go on to insult me.Yeah,.. ok you're worth bothering with.Go away. http://slashdot.org/my/logout [slashdot.org]

The right answer is to get rid of sales tax altogether. It's a ridiculously backwards, regressive tax that penalizes the poor more than the rich. You can try to make it fair by omitting food and basic necessities, but that doesn't work well because it hits the middle class the most, and is open to administrative abuses (the favored companies of the ones administrating the tax can have things omitted in their favor).

I rarely buy anything locally anymore (except for food) even if it costs me more to buy from overseas. Why? Australian resellers (both traditional and online), distributors and importers are lazy abusive con artists.

Every time I try to order anything locally it's either marked up by an obscene amount (anywhere from 200% to 2000% over the retail price in the US/UK/EU/etc.) or more likely simply unavailable because the local shops and distributors couldn't be fucked carrying anything except the cheapest shitty thing they can import from China.

Email an online store here and ask about a product - 90% of the time you get no reply. Go into a bricks and mortar shop and ask for something and 90% of the time they'll answer by offering you a completely different product. When you tell them that you're after a specific make and model and aren't interested in alternatives more often than not the sales guy will abuse you.

Just today I had another experience of the local bullshit: I wanted to buy some new HDD's (I'd rather buy spinning chunks of rust locally for warranty purposes), I'd settled on the new Hitachi 7K3000 in the 2TB size (note that the 3TB size _is_ available here) so I emailed the three distributors mentioned on the Hitachi site. One bounced (this also happens a lot) one ignored me and the other one said that I'd have to wait at least two more months before they'd be bothered to import them. Best guess as to why: there are probably thousands of the older 7K2000 2TB model sitting in a warehouse in Japan and the local dickheads probably offered to take them at a reduced price from Hitachi all the while still charging the same price to the customer.

This debate has been making headlines here for a few weeks now and the thing I find most ironic is that no one has bothered to suggest that just maybe the GST should be simply abolished - everyone seems to accept the idea that the government sticking its hand in your pocket every time you make a purchase as some kind of natural law. This baffles me: the left should naturally be against it because it disproportionately taxes the poor and the right should be against it because it's a tax that is administered non-voluntarily buy businesses without recompense.

I'm an Australian consumer and I will happily pay an extra 10% on purchases for GST on behalf of the overseas retailer.

Goods online are, in nearly all instances over 50% cheaper overseas. If I can give 10% of this money to Australia to help support our country I am happy to do so.

Dear Retailers who are involved in this,

Please rest assured I and every other consumer who is outraged at your comments will never shop in your overpriced, monopolized brick and mortar stores ever again. Our AUD has almost doubled in value (54c to 101c vs USD) yet our prices are still increasing.

I don't get why goods are so bloody expensive in Australia. I was there for 6 months in 2009... I wanted to buy the Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand, which was the next destination on my travels. A$45 from the main book shop chain in Melbourne, or A$37 from Amazon in the UK (including probably about $20 AIRMAIL shipping). How the hell can goods be over twice the price, and still considerably more expensive than goods shipped on planes from almost the exact opposite side of the planet? I hear stories l

i see this as the foremost excuse that private interests use to push bullshit for themselves. now whenever i see any justification using that 'jobs' bullshit, i label it as crap being pushed by private interests and disregard whatever it is attached to.

The less competitive firms argue for protectionism, rather than offer decent online shopping sites.

I buy from Australian sites when they are worthwhile: when they offer service and choice. I have bought mobile phones and Android tablets from Australian websites, because they had local warranties, faster delivery, and a decent range of items at competitive prices.

With books and CDs, it is often better to buy from overseas, where the range is much wider. And anyway, the books I want are just not available in

Yeah you're right I should say it's unfair to Aussie online retailers as well, but that's the point the Aussie retailers have to pay GST on any goods they sell you. It's nice not to pay tax, but it would also be nice to have a tax system not structured in such a way that it puts Australian businesses at a disadvantage over their overseas competitors and potentially forces them and the jobs they create off shore.

Yeah you're right I should say it's unfair to Aussie online retailers as well, but that's the point the Aussie retailers have to pay GST on any goods they sell you. It's nice not to pay tax, but it would also be nice to have a tax system not structured in such a way that it puts Australian businesses at a disadvantage over their overseas competitors and potentially forces them and the jobs they create off shore.

Either you're charging GST on every purchase or your not.

For the record I don't think this will rescue Harvey Norman or Myer or anyone. They're price gouging arseholes, but I don't think the government should be taxing some business and not others.

The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for. What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.

"However - tax on overseas is already what is applied to products entering Europe. VAT and customs fee is added by the customs office."

I don't know where you live, but I haven't paid any VAT and custom online, and I buy a lot outside the EU. The last time I paid VAT online was when I bought a couple of jeans on Compuserve before the Web was invented.

They don't have use tax like some other people have to pay? I mean, here in Washington state, if I buy from a retailer who doesn't charge sales tax, I'm liable for the tax still. Although, I'm sure a lot of Washingtonians don't know about it, or don't care if they do (and they probably won't get caught as long as it isn't expensive).

I don't know what Australia is like, but here's an idea...Could they make things revenue neutral by...i. Implementing an tax on overseas purchases and,ii. Lowering the GST so th

Could they make things revenue neutral by...i. Implementing an tax on overseas purchases and,ii. Lowering the GST so things are neutral as before?

Either lowering the percentage, or perhaps exempting some more items to make it a bit more progressive?

The thing is, even though the retailers are blowing a storm about all this, something like less than 3% of all purchases were made online in Australia over the Christmas break and less than 1% of all purchases were from an overseas retailer. To mess with something as complex and far-reaching as the GST for this miniscule amount would be more trouble than it's worth.

when I visited australia I learned that you guys have an absolutely and compltely utterly insane level of sales tax on anything which isn't food.books, videos etc cost a minimum of twice as much in AU as my home country in europe.

10% and the previous regime was a lot different. Software was 0%. Hardware was 22% Luxuries like flavoured milk and cosmetics were ~30%. If you were in the right business you could get a tax exemption by filling in a bunch of paperwork. Computer hardware required two separate registration numbers because people were rorting the first one.

Also note, sales tax is federal. The states get their cut from that 10%.

GST is only 10% and some books are not hit with it. The reason books are so expensive is there is a local publishing cartel that is anything but competitive. The laugh is even if the 10% GST is added it wont hide the fact that local retailers have a 400% markup on some goods and on-line resellers usually have a 15-80% markup.

The problem in cases like that is that the state doesn't provide any sort of reasonable way of paying. It should be collected by the retailer, but there again, they don't provide a reasonable way for the retailer to know how much to charge, and given the disparity and the ability of local taxing authorities to tack on extra sales tax, it ends up being a daunting challenge.

Imagine sending the state a check every time you bought something online, even if it were for a few dollars. One of the problems is th

Please, don't export the US tax system. We want it less than you do. Even your statements show that it doesn't work and is unfair... large parts of the rest of the world put the onus on the retailer to collect the taxes. In the case of imports, the carriers (FedEx, postal service, person arriving on a plane, etc) have to work with customs, who charge the taxes. Much better than a voluntary system that is clearly abused.

The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers.

Now you need to be careful with your definitions here - I know what you mean though... The consumer does end up paying the GST as they're the end user of the good or service. This GST is collected by the retailer at the point of purchase and paid to the Government. (input credits not withstanding etc...)

What they're proposing is that Customs will hold any imported goods and levy a 10% GST on them before you're allowed to receive them.

There's a very good reason why the Government doesn't do this already, and

This is exactly at the crux of the matter and should be rated more highly (and mentioned more often). The major retailers are bitching about an amazingly small minority of all purchases and simply want a tax to discourage people to even consider online shopping.

If Gerry Harvey had stayed away from Ruslan Kogan, I wouldn't have even looked at his site. He gets the odd mention in APC but that never raised my interest. I think Gerry may have learned his lesson this time.

How exactly does the consumer avoid paying sales tax? If you go into a shop and buy something the price includes tax on top of what ever mark-up the retailer puts on. Sales tax in the UK just went up from 17.5% to 20% and all retailers are passing that on to the consumer, even if they try to mask it with sales and offers.

Taxing overseas purchases is done with import duty and sales tax on imported items. The consumer pays the taxes.

Taxation really needs to be sorted out by going back to the principals rather

The specific problem in the UK comes from European law. VAT is covered by a treaty so that you can buy VAT-paid goods in one EU country and bring them to another without having to pay VAT in the destination. This is intended to gradually harmonise VAT rates, since it means that a country with a high VAT rate will lose out to imports from its neighbours. Signatories were allowed to keep their existing VAT exemptions, but are not allowed to add new ones without permission from Brussels.

The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for. What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.

Whoops. Me thinks you hav e no understanding of how our GST works. At the end of the day, the final consumer or purchaser of the goods *always* pays the 10% GST.When a retailer or any wholesalers purchase any item, they pay 10% GST on that item.When they on-sell the item (be it wholesale or retail), they charge the next person in the chain 10% GST. They then claim the 10% they paid back and pass on the difference to the Grubbermint.

For anyone involved in manufacture, wholesale, or retail, GST is so much eas

The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for. What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.

And where exactly is your problem here?I am German, our VAT is generally 19% on all purchases, in stores and on the internet. Where non-physical goods like software downloads are sold from foreign retailers to German customers, foreign retailers have to collect the tax for the German state - and they do so, to save their customers the hassle of tax fraud investigations (a whole different issue here: German tax authorities can investigate your bank account at any time).Where physical goods enter the country,

They could charge an import tax, the same as they already do for imports over $AU 1000.

The problem with doing this, aside from pissing off consumers, is that, unless you want to go for voluntary declarations the way out of state online purchases in the US (don't) work, it costs more money to collect the import tax on a $100 order than it actually generates. That would mean that this whole thing would turn into a government subsidy for Australian retailers. Nothing necessarily wrong with that governments sub

There are sites out there which are cheap and have free postage. A good example is DealExtreme [dealextreme.com] - $7.20 for a HDMI cable with free postage. That isn't the cheapest on the site, they go from $4.52!

DealExtreme is actually a really good example of this problem, in that everything I've ordered from them has had a fraudulent customs declaration (either too low value, or 'gift'). I've considered trying to remedy it, and I'm sure that correcting it would be simple, but it requires me to get off the couch to pay someone money for something I already have, so the motivation isn't very strong and I end up forgetting.

In theory, they should already be collecting tax on overseas purchases. In practice, there's

I haven't checked the prices, but DealExtreme http://dealextreme.com/ [dealextreme.com] has some insane prices.Every price you see on the site there is in USD and INCLUDES international shipping anywhere in the world.I think the only way they can do it is by being subsidised by the Chinese Government.

I've quite literally bought items off that site for a couple of dollars and had them turn up in my post box 7-10 days later. I'm amazed, so much so that when I've had issues with the products (and at those prices you can't hones

I honestly don't know how they do it. And then in this thread I've also been pointed to http://www.goodluckbuy.com/ [goodluckbuy.com] which seems to be a similar deal, only they list prices in AUD if you want...

Re: DX - don't expect everything you buy to be exactly as advertised - read the comments threads. Don't expect much in the way of customer support too - it never hurts to try, but sometimes you won't get very far... Take it for what it's worth!

Bingo! This is exactly why they don't collect GST on purchases from overseas, and why when you buy something big, they do hold it in customs till you cough up.

The Government exempting online purchases with less than $100 GST collectable isn't because they're all warm and fuzzy and want to give us a good deal. It's because it would cost more than the GST amount to collect it.

Here in New Zealand, any consignment which would attract a GST tax of less than NZ$50 is not taxed because collection costs would exceed the $50 to be collected.

However, when GST was recently increased from 12.5% to 15%, they also added an extra fee so that if your package does attract $50 or more of GST, you're also hit with about (from memory) another $28 or so as a "biosecurity fee" or something similar.

How on earth they deduce that only goods that have $50 or more of GST payable might represent a threat

The taxpayer, who has to pick up the tab for the implementation and border enforcement - of the 20c tax on a $2 cable. Because I'll tell you one thing for free, the overseas retailers won't be collecting and remitting it. Why should they? They've got their own tax laws to ensure compliance with. You start expecting online retailers to comply with taxes in every single country on the planet they sell to, and you're looking at compliance costs jumping up by orders of magnitude. Guess what? Then you're in a situation where online retailers are at a hundred fold disadvantage to brick and mortar stores. So your only option is customs charging it at the border.

There's a reason that governments only charge sales tax on expensive overseas purchases - the administrative cost of charging tax (including biosecurity vetting, staffing costs, storage, payment administration, and all sorts of other expenses). And for bonus points, you have to charge different amounts of tax based on the origin (Free Trade Agreements, or at least ones as one sided as US Free Trade Agreements, tend to forbid charging more tax than the other country charges on imports). So then US online retailers have an advantage over any others. Yay!

I personally feel that anyone who supports this tax probably works for a large Australian (or New Zealand, which tends to mean Australian anyway) retailer. So which one are you?

You cant always blame the retailer. Sometimes its the local wholesaler/importer who is gouging the Aussie market.Take for example Burton snowboarding gear. Its much more expensive to walk into a store and buy here (even after accounting for GST and freight costs) than it is to walk into a store in the US and buy the same product.Same thing with LEGO sets. I can walk into a store in the US and buy the latest LEGO police station for US$100 (or even less if I was to buy from a US online retailer or find it fro

When I can purchase something from overseas for quite literally half the retail price here in Australia, then add a bit of shipping and it's still significantly cheaper, I'd actually be happy to pay another 10% on top as it's STILL cheaper than purchasing the item here in Oz.

This leads to the situation of some large brand names - Canon and Nikon spring to mind, that take advantage of their market position to do everything they can to kill the grey market. If you buy, for example, a Canon DSLR here in Australia, if it's a grey market import (ie, not imported directly by Canon Australia) then Canon will not only refuse to service it under warranty (fair enough I suppose as the product doesn't have an international warranty) but they will actively refuse to perform any work on it whatsoever, even if you want to pay to have it serviced. If it's not an Oz serial number they simply will not touch it.

Now, this is a big deal as I can get a Canon EOS 5D MkII camera body in the USA for $2499 (I'm assuming for the purpose of this exercise that $1AUD = $1USD)Were I to purchase that very same camera here in Australia, from Canon, for $3599. If I were to turn to eBay instead and get one from Hong Kong, I can get this very same camera for $2300 with free shipping.

There have even been times where if you wanted a mid-range or high-end MacBook Pro, it'd be cheaper to fly to the USA, walk into an Apple store, buy the computer and fly home than it would have been to purchase the same machine here in Australia.

The pattern to really high local prices seems to be when the parent company controls the importation and distribution, we all get reamed.

There have even been times where if you wanted a mid-range or high-end MacBook Pro, it'd be cheaper to fly to the USA, walk into an Apple store, buy the computer and fly home than it would have been to purchase the same machine here in Australia.

If I could cover my expenses and spend a week at the beach, I'd volunteer to cram two suitcases with laptops and fly to Australia.

The thing is, shipping costs more than the 10% GST in most cases anyway. So there isn't anything to gain from taxing overseas retailers. All it does is make things more complicated to purchase from them, meaning that at the end of the day, the only people that would lose out in that scenario are the consumers. So if the prices were competitive, people would more than likely buy local. I know that's how I operate, international sales are a pain when you need to make a warranty claim.

Having experienced this kind of anal import policies while I was living in Germany, I cannot stress enough how much you want to avoid this. Not necessarily because of the money(10% of a pair of shoes is what, $5?), but because of the stupid hoops they make you jump through just to get access to your own property. I had an electronic dictionary(one they don't even sell in Germany) sent to me from Japan, and instead of getting it in the mail I instead got a notice that I had to go to Nuremberg, which was over an hour away, and they weren't open on weekends and hardly open at all during the weekday. I went there and saw about 10 young employees standing around essentially doing nothing, eventually they said they would send it to my address in the states so I could collect it when I went home. Long story short they fucked me over and sent it back to the dude I bought it from. Fortunately he gave me most of my money back, but the long and short of it is that the German government spent their own money to deny me my property. Fucking brilliant.

Even for people who don't get fucked over like I did have to take a huge chunk out of their day to trudge over to the zollamt, if they could even get any time off when the stupid thing was open(they steal your shit then don't even have the common decency to have reasonable hours), all so you can spend 30 minutes filling out forms so they can collect 5 euros from you. Seriously, this woman who came it at the same time received some sort of figurine from the US, the thing was maybe, MAYBE worth 30 euros and they still made her do all that stupid shit I think she walked out of there paying them about 5 euros. They probably spent more than that just on the "labor", really it's just a massive employment program with some government manager probably getting a nice fat salary because he has to "manage" all those people.

It's Germany, they aren't exactly known for being loosy goosy with bureaucracy. It's not at all shocking that they'd be very by the book even if it's kind of silly. This is a bit like going to Italy and complaining because they don't know how to wait in lines.

Sounds like a problem with Germany's implementation, rather than with the idea. In the UK, you get a note saying that it's been held at customs and have a few options for paying the VAT. Once this is done, it will be delivered. This is a standard service offered by the Royal Mail, but private couriers offer something similar. It is also possible for foreign companies that want to minimise delays when shipping to people in the UK to register with HMRC and collect the VAT at time of sale.

It seems unfair to have one set of rules for online retailers and another for brick and mortar retailers.

but there isn't. Online Australian retailers operate under the same rules and laws as brick and mortar retailers.

The Australian government realises it does not have power over foreign retailers. The tax free threshold was established to allow cheaper imports and create competition in our stagnant, monopoly dominated retail market.

Read this blog entry of Rulsan Kogan [kogan.com.au] who runs an online store within Australia. Kogan.com.au pays the same taxes and import duties as Harvey Norman but does a much lower volume of sales then HN yet manages a much better price on equivalent (no-name brand) goods.

This is Gerry Harvey and others attempting to foist an artificial barrier to consumer choice and the free market in general. It wont stop at 10% (the GST) because Harvey cant compete with Aussie online retailers, let alone Chinese or US ones.

First off, when you pretend to be Australian, step number one is use En_AU

I'd say Gerry Harvey understands that everything is going to online shopping, and also realizes that for him (and others) to stay competitive is to go offshore for warehousing via holding companies.

Flat out wrong. Gerry does understand that a lot of retail is going online, what he doesn't realise is his business model needs to change in order to remain competitive. Already most Australian's would rather shop at other retailers

The "very patriotic" bit is another clue that you are from the good old USA yawl. We know he very definitely isn't (I don't think I could find a single Australian made product for sale in any of his shops, furniture included) but really don't give a shit about that aspect anyway. We've had so many confidence tricksters, corrupt politicians and other criminals wrap themselves in the flag that the only businessman that can really get away with it without too many people laughing at him is Dick Smith - and t

I can give you concrete examples of how he killed it. MY parents used to own a furniture store, Gerry's minions used to turn up in the store once a week to get prices so he could undercut there stuff and arranged for exclusive deals with manufacturers to lock them out of selling certain items. They hung on until retirement but only barely, Gerry may be a nice guy, but their are no nice guys when it comes to business and he is as big a bastard as the rest of them when it comes to making money.

Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt, what he's basically saying is that brick and mortar stores are a very inefficient and expensive way to provide goods to people. Rather than improve their efficiency or allow the market to kill off the old and no longer useful ways, we should artificially inflate the cost of more efficient methods of providing goods to people, so that all the methods we have available are equally inefficient.

that is completely and utterly incorrect. Most of the online retailers are also traditional bricks and mortar stores and operate out of the same warehouses for those. Gerry harvey and Co have completely and utterly ignored the online market as they have found their isolation has allowed them blissfull ignorance to overcharge, you only have to have a look at the pathetic online pressence of the big players. The true irony here is that Gerry/Myers etc drove most of the small retailers out of business all the

On the face of it you'd be right, but the issue isn't that simple. A previous government set the GST thresholds to increasingly higher levels in the first few years after the GST introduction because they realised it was costing more to enforce the tax on these small imports than they were taking in.

The retailers are effectively asking for the government to put up artificial roadblocks for online shoppers. Since overseas retailers aren't going to collect taxes for the Aussie government the only way to work

You obviously don't understand GST credits. If I buy something at $40 wholesale and pay $4 in GST, when I sell it to you for $50 + $5 GST, I give the government $1 and claim a GST credit for the other $4 - it's not like the old wholesale taxes.

... the price difference was not typically more than 150% markup [harveynorman.com.au] (without shipping) on the same product [ozgameshop.com] (with free shipping) as opposed to the 10% GST.

To be 100% fair. Video Game prices in OZ are set by the distributors, not Harvey Norman, JB Hifi or EB games (but JB Hifi is consistently $10-20 cheaper then HN or EB). OzGameShop does grey imports (legal) on a case by case basis (I.E. per order, which is also legal). Basically they order the games from Asia/UK/US when

I'd agree with that if both of them had the same taxes but they don't. One has a sales tax from 0$ on up; the other has zero sales tax up to 1k$. What they ought to do is do away with all sales tax and replace it with something else that isn't so hostile to the poor.

The retailers in Australia collect GST from us (the consumer) and pay it to the Government.The Australian Government has no control over retailers overseas and can not compel them to pay any tax at all.

All Australian retailers (online and physical) have exactly the same taxes to collect and pay to the Government.

Overseas retailers don't, if the Government wanted to collect GST for amounts less than $100 in one transaction, they would need to have EVERY SINGLE parcel from overseas held in customs for the end

Hear hear to this... And not just pricing - this goes to the heart of retail in every country. Regional encoding of dvds, printer cartridges, mobile phone locking, tariffs...the list goes on. they're all about passing on the benefits of globalisation to the manufacturers and distributors - while deliberately making it difficult or impossible for the consumer to reap similar benefits.

Ditto when I owned a Video shop (sold when I saw the move to downloads) we had to pay twice or more the retail price for rental copies the why rental VHS tapes were once better in quality this simply carried on when DVD's came out ( quite a few store owners actually started buying their DVD's for rent at Big W/Kmart etc) ditto in the electronics area wholesale price for small retailers were often higher than the harvey norman retail price the reason the small guy made the sale was that we knew our products